DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Dale Earnhardt could get used to this
sports car racing.

The seven-time Winston Cup champion, taking part for the first
time in the Rolex 24-Hours sports car endurance race at Daytona
International Speedway, is co-driving a Chevrolet Corvette with son
and fellow NASCAR star Dale Jr. and road racing veterans Andy
Pilgrim and Kerry Collins in a Chevrolet Corvette.

"This sports car racing is pretty neat," the elder Earnhardt
said with a grin. "You have a guy qualify the car and set it up
for you and then you just get in and drive once in a while. I'm
thinking about doing that for my Winston Cup team."

Although Earnhardt there are lots of drivers who could do a
better job for the team, Pilgrim disagreed.

"These guys don't need any tutoring," Pilgrim said. "We're
just giving them information. They are both running right on pace
and taking care of the car."

Earnhardt Sr., who already leads all drivers at Daytona with 34
victories in Winston Cup, the Busch Series and IROC, said sports
car racing and this race in particular have always fascinated him.

"I'm a big fan of all kind of racing and I've always felt like
I'd like to have the Daytona 24-Hours on my resume when I retire
someday, especially when I can do it with my son," Earnhardt said.
"I was looking at it pretty close last year, but I had neck
surgery and had to put it off."

Now, he's here, racing on the 3.56-mile road circuit that uses
about 75 percent of the 2.5-mile, high-banked oval.

"I'm taking it pretty easy out there," Earnhardt said. "I'm
pretty careful around traffic. I want to be around at the end of 24
hours - that's my goal."

Series sponsor
Roger Edmondson, president of the Grand American
Road Racing Association, announced Friday that Rolex Watch USA has
agreed to become title sponsor of the series for at least three
years.

Rolex has been sponsor of the 24-hour race in Daytona --
America's most prestigious endurance event -- for 10 years.

Beginning with the race that starts Saturday at 1 p.m. EST, the
company will sponsor the entire 10-race series in 2001.

Live, Long TV
The twice-around-the clock season-opener in
Daytona will be telecast live, start to finish, for the first time
on cable by Speedvision.

Roger Werner, founder and CEO of the company, said, "In terms
of complexity, a 24-hour endurance race has got to be about the
toughest thing we do live on television. It's extremely
unpredictable. It can be extremely exciting right down to the wire
or deadly dull.

"In any case, it requires continuous high-level involvement
from the broadcast team for an entire day."

Historically, Werner added, other networks -- whether cable or
over the air -- would give an event like this 20 minutes or perhaps
an hour of coverage.

"In the best cases, they'd give it an hour at the start and an
hour or two at the finish. To really tell the story live over 25
hours is something only a network like Speedvision can do."

To get the job done, Speedvision is changing some of the
traditional ways television covers racing.

"We are taking the camera positions down and closer to the
track," explained Roger Scanlon, senior vice president of
programming and production. " We're going to give the viewer a
better sense of speed, and not just the appearance of speed. Being
far away and up high, you don't really get the sense of speed at
home that you do if you are standing at the fence at the corner of
the frontstretch at Daytona.

"It will be much harder work for the camera people because
their movements side-to-side now become much faster, and doing that
for hours on end gets to be tough work."

There will be many more microphones and on-board cameras.

"We're going to be a thing we call racing diaries on specific
teams, including the Earnhardts in the Corvette," Scanlon said.

Best laid plans
Michael Johnson, a former star on MTV's "The
Real World," gave up his early dreams of being a race driver to
fulfill another dream -- being a team owner.

He might have had second thoughts about the latter Friday as his
two-car Archangel Motorsports team scrambled to get ready for the
Rolex 24.

"This is my first Rolex 24," the 27-year Johnson said.
"Everything's been pretty hectic this week."

The team had everything organized for this race two months ago,
but a new car wasn't delivered until last Saturday, and a new
gearbox for the other team car came with some of the pieces
missing.

"Both of those happening at the same time threw a wrench into
the works," Johnson said. "But we're confident we'll be back on
our plan by Saturday."